Timesizing® Associates

---

Downsizings in February/2000
[Commentary] ©2000 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 117, Harvard Square, Cambridge MA 02238 USA (617) 623-8080

2/29/2k Navigant International Inc., NYT, C4.
...Englewood, Colo., one of the five largest providers of travel consulting to businesses, plans to cut 130 positions, or about 3.7% of its work force, to reduce costs.

2/26/2k  2 downsizings reported, totaling 175 jobcuts -

1. TI Group, NYT, B3.
   ...London, a specialized engineering and manufacturing company, said its vehicle-parts manufacturing unit, TI Group Automotive Systems, would cut 105 jobs and close a factory in Valdosta, Ga. in July.

2. Brown-Forman Corp., NYT, B3.
   ...Louisville, Ky., which markets whiskies, wine products, china and luggage, said a wholly owned subsidiary, Lenox inc., Lawrenceville, NJ, would cut 70 jobs at its Gorham factory in Smithfield, RI, and move all stainless-steel flatwear production overseas.

1. [Yesterday RWE bought rival VEW and today -]
   RWE to cut 12,500 jobs, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   Germany's 2nd-largest utility...will cut 12,500 jobs to combat sagging energy earnings as it prepares for the...$4B purchase of its smaller rival VEW A.G. [announced yesterday]. RWE will reduce the number of workers in its main business by 25%, to about 40,500, after integrating VEW.
   [So are we talking twice about the same layoff here, or a nearly 25% cut now and an additional 25% cut later? - Fuzzy writing!]
   It will take a charge of [$1.8B] for the cuts, which come after operating profit fell 19% in the first half.
   [Again the lethal takeover-layoff connection.]

2. Ford luxury units heading west, blowout headline (pointing to A17), NYT, C1.
   The Jaguar, Aston Marting and Volvo units of Ford Motor said that they would move their North American HQ from northern New Jersey to Irvine, Calif. The companies will relocate about 225 jobs and leave roughly 300 behind at their current location.

1. Unilever plans huge cuts in jobs, plants and brands, by Alan Cowell, NYT, C1.
   LONDON - ...The world's leading maker of consumer goods...said [yester]day that it would embark on a severe program of corporate cutbacks, eliminating 25,000 jobs over five years, closing 100 factories and possibly jettisoning up to 75% of its products.... The Unilever job cuts amount to 10% of the company's global work force.... Most of the job reductions will be made in Europe and North and South America.... In absolute terms, the job cuts rank among the most sizable by a European company, though they are by no means the biggest ever. Former state-owned monopolies like British Telecoms and Deutsche Telekom...cut far more jobs after they were privatized, for example. Some leading European banks have also cut many thousands of overlapping jobs resulting from mergers..\.. Company officials announced the changes as Unilever reported that profits fell 5% last year....
   [And therein lies the mechanism of depression - companies downsizing not when they're in loss but when they're in profit, and downsizing 10% not when they have a 10% profit drop but when they only have a 5% profit drop. Result? Smaller workforce, smaller consumer base, smaller markets - so we have another round of downsizing and it gets worse. Unilever's founder would roll over in his grave. Forward-looking Lord Leverhulme wrote a book in 1919 called The Six Hour Day and Other Industrial Questions. It was used as a guidebook in 1930 when Kellogg President Lewis Brown converted Kellogg's Cereals from three 8-hour shifts to four 6-hour shifts (40-hr week to 30-hr week) in Battle Creek, Mich., to provide work for 300 more heads of household in their HQ town, and that successful working model provided the basis for the Black-Perkins 30-hour work week bill which passed the U.S. Senate on April 6, 1933. Unfortunately our sainted President FDR took one look at that bill, said, "It's not mine!" and "It's socialism!" and proceeded to leap into more detailed, incentive-bashing socialistic micromanagement than you could shake a stick at, none of which worked to solve even half the unemployment of the Depression until 1942 when World War II succeeded where it failed.
   [More on Unilever's self-mutilation in "Unilever outlines plans for plant closings," Bloomberg via 10/03/2000 NYT, C8 -]
   LONDON - ...The largest maker of food and soap products plans to close about 25 plants this year and next at a cost of about $1.1B, a co-chairman, Antony Burgmans, said [yester]day. The company, which makes Lipton tea and Dove soaps, also identified 8,000 jobs to be eliminated as part of a plan announced in February to close 100 plants and reduce its work force by 10%....

2. Service Merchandise cutting 4,800 more jobs, AP via NYT, C4.
   ...The Nashville-based company was forced into Chapter 11 last March by a group of creditors, claiming total debts of $1.29B. The company has so far closed 122 stores and cut 5,000 jobs. \It\ plans to cut 4,800 additional jobs [30% of surviving staff], reduce store sizes and discontinue some product lines as part of its ongoing bankruptcy reorganization plan.... The company began notifying workers yesterday about the latest job cuts. The company currently has about 16,000 full-time employees at it Nashville offices, 3 distribution centers and 221 stores in 32 states.

1. Ford job cuts, by Alan Cowell, NYT, B2.
   Citing the "poor and unacceptable" performance of its European division, the Ford Motor Co. said it would cut 1,500 of the 4,300 jobs [35%] at its biggest British plant, at Dagenham, east of London.
   [Thus CEOs punish their workforce for their own mistakes, but by punishing their workforce they all wind up punishing their markets and punishing themselves.]
   The plant has been running on a four-day week for more than 16 months.
   [A 32-hr workweek for 16 months?! - is anybody studying this?]
   Ford produces far more cars in Europe than it can sell in the face of competition from VW...and PSA Peugeot Citroën....
   [Then why not take a page from your own founder and make it possible for your own workforce to absorb their own productivity? - cut hours and raise pay. Enter the 21st Century instead of going back to the 19th.]
   Last year, Ford's European division produced 2.25m vehicles and sold 1.7m [24% fewer], as its West European market share fell from 10% to 9.3%.
   [A 35% workforce cut is a lot bigger than a 24% drop in sales. Well, as Walter Reuther retorted when Henry Ford said, "Let's see you unionize these robots!" - "Let's see you sell them cars."]

2. Cross, fountain pen maker, to cut Irish work force 60%, Bloomberg via NYT, B3.
   The A. T. Cross Co...said yesterday that it would cut about 100 jobs at its Irish plant, or 60% of the workforce there, and consolidate all pen production in Rhode Is. to cut costs. The transition from a plant in Ballinasloe, Ireland, to Cross's HQ in Lincoln, RI, should be completed by July. The Irish plant will become a distribution center for markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The move is part of a strategy to bolster the profits....
   [There won't be any profits without markets, and there won't be any markets without jobs, and there can't continue to be 40-hr/wk jobs with robotization, computerization, cybernetics, mechanization and automation continuing to make production faster and easier. Make up your minds, CEOs of the world, - turn Luddite, cut your workweek or...cut your own throat.]

3. Frontier Insurance Group Inc., NYT, B3.
   ...Rock Hill, NY, a property and casualty insurer, laid off 71 employees [10%], including 60 from its corporate HQ. The cuts reduced the company's staff to about 640 in Rock Hill, 15 miles north of Middletown, and 1,200 nationwide.

1. Saks Inc., NYT, C4.
   ...Birmingham, Ala., a department store operator, said it would cut about 460 jobs, or less than 1% of its work force, as it closes a distribution center in St. Cloud, Minn., and combines functions at two of its units.

2. Children's [Hospital in Boston] to cut 50 workers, end programs, by Liz Kowalczyk, Boston Globe, C5.
   ...The country's largest pediatric medical center said yesterday it will lay off about 50 employees, cut administrative expenses, and eliminate programs to make up for falling revenues. Children's...lost $61m last year [and] during the first quarter of 2000 the hospital came up $1.2m short [because] insurance companies have shifted some patients from overnight stays to "observational status" of less than 24 hours - a service for which the hospital collects less money. Children's is also bracing for...$3m more [red ink] than expected on treating Medicaid patients. The hospital is the largest provider of pediatric care to low-income children in the state.
   [Welcome to the so-called economic boom.]
   Hospital officials will decide over the next few weeks which programs to consolidate or eliminate and where to lay off employees. "We have 240 vacant positions right now and we will look there first"...said..\..CEO Sandra L. Fenwick....

2/16/2k  Air Canada grapples with its takeover of Canadian Airlines - A carrier may put its former rival in bankruptcy court, by Timothy Pritchard, NYT, C4.
...In the three months since Air Canada won congtrol of the nation's air space, it has grappled with making good on a promise to improve air service, generate higher returns for shareholders, eliminate thousands of overlapping jobs and reduce billions of dollars in debt - much of it owed by the financially ailing airline it had struggled to buy in the first place....

2/12/2k  2 downsizings reported, totaling 420 jobcuts -

1. Cuts at software maker, Bloomberg via NYT, B3.
   The Policy Mgmt Systems Corp., which sells software to insurance and financial-service companies, said late on Thursday that it planned to cut 350 jobs, or 6% of its work force. About 200 of the job cuts are at [its] HQ. Based [in Columbia, S.C., it] said it was seeking to cut costs by $20m.

2. Viasoft Inc., NYT, B3.
   ...Phoenix, a maker of computer software, said it would dismiss about 70 employees and take a Q3 charge of about $1.4m to cut costs after its failed merger with the Compuware Corp., Farmington Hills, Mich.

• Russell [Corp.] says it will eliminate 800 more jobs in U.S., Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
  The...maker of Russell Athletic sportswear is cutting 800 more jobs in the United States as part of its plan to move more than 90% of its assembly plants to Honduras and Mexico by the end of the year. The cuts will probably be at plants in N.C., Va., and Alab.... The company has eliminated 4,241 U.S. jobs over the last 18 months, shrinking its domestic work force to about 10,250.
  [Perot's "giant sucking sound" of American jobs sweeping south of the border continues. The 4241 jobcuts were referred to obliquely on 12/04/99 in our Tultex story, but we haven't counted them, so we better count them now.]
  Russell has 16,000 employees worldwide.

2/09/2k  2 downsizings reported, totaling 27,000 jobcuts + unspecified -

1. South Africa planning to sell its 4 big state-run companies - The "need" to attract capital is expected to take a heavy job toll [ed: our quotes], by Henri Cauvin, NYT, C4.
   ...Taken together, the companies - Eskom, Transnet, Telkom South Africa and Denel...employ roughly three-quarters of [all] the people working for state enterprises. Many of their operations lose money.... Said Katharine Butt of Business Map, an economic research firm, "It's putting a strain on the country...."
   [Wait till she sees how much strain there is from the downward multiplier effect of 27,000 layoffs!]
   Among the issues [the government] is grappling with are the considerable debt carried by some state enterprises, burdensome regulations and the prospect of large-scale layoffs in a country with severe unemployment. Perhaps nowhere else are these issues more pronounced than at Transnet, the vast web of government-run transportation operations, which is more than $4B in debt.... Spoornet, Transnet's money-losing rail subsidiary, is one reason the debt has increased. Last week, the government announced plans to sell one of Spoornet's more attractive lines....
   [So these morons are selling the profitable parts? Brilliant!]
   Last week, the Congress of South African Trade Unions organized demonstrations to draw attention to the loss of jobs in the South African economy, a problem to which Spoornet could soon be contributing. The Spoornet restructuring plan has proposed laying off as many as 27,000 workers to make the rail company profitable....
   [Brilliant! Start a downward spiral of your consumer base in order to attract a "deus ex machina" to ride over the hill like the cavalry and save you. Just brilliant! Once again, in this mechanized, automated, computerized, robotized and cyberneticized world, South Africa should be sharing the vanishing work with a flexible workweek reduction program such as Timesizing.]

2. Argentina: Spies cut by a third, Reuters via NYT, A6.
   The secret intelligence service will fire a third of its staff to save money and replace spies with computers, its new chief said. "These days you should be relying much more on analysis and on new technology than on lots of employees," said Fernando de Santibanes, a prominent banker appointed head of the service after Pres. Fernando de la Rúa took office in December.
   [Here's a direct if somewhat bizarre incidence of technological disemployment and a well-deserved kick upstage to the critics of the multiply misnamed long-term Lump of "Labor" "Fallacy" (actually the short-term Fixed Pool of Employment Truism). We would applaud de Santibanes for his courage - spies have got to be among the more dangerous people to downsize. Anybody around here want to take on the CIA or even the FBI? And even if these downsized spies don't (clandestinely of course) "go postal," they can probably stir up a lot of business for themselves - sort of the way we imagine the friends (or alter egos) of computer-virus checker creators do. There are a number of "skills" that have an obvious, if somewhat perverse, ability to generate a market for themselves.]

1. [Again, the lethal but unnecessary merger-downsizing connection -]
   Phillips, Chevron chemical units to join, Bloomberg via Boston Globe, D6.
   Chevron Corp. and Phillips Petroleum Co. said they will combine their chemical businesses into a joint venture and cut about 600 jobs, or 10% of its workforce [to] boost their earnings..\.. San Francisco-based Chevron is the second-largest US oil company. Phillips, based in Bartlesville, OK.... Combined, their chemical businesses employ about 6,000 people and had 1999 revenue of almost $6B....
   [Another unnecessary downsizing by a company in profit - this is precisely the way depressions are induced.]

2. Basement gets court OK to shut all [eight] Aisle 3 stores, by Chris Reidy, Bos Globe, D10.
   The US Bankruptcy Court in Boston has approved a request by Filene's Basement Corp. to close its chain of eight Aisle 3 stores....

2/04/2k  3 downsizings reported, totaling 1450 more jobcuts + undisclosed -

1. Uranium co. cutting 850 workers, by Katherine Rizzo, AP via AOLNews via RadioTony, AP-NY-02-03-00 1851 EST.
   [Boy, how did this juicy story manage to make no appearance on the pages of the NYT or the Boston Globe? If anyone's in any doubt about their transformation into Pravda and Izvestia, here's the proof.]
   The company that owns and operates the nation's only two uranium enrichment plants said Thursday it will lay off 850 workers, about 22% of its work force.  U.S. Enrichment Corp. [USEC] has been hurt by falling prices for enriched uranium, which is used to fuel nuclear power plants. The company is also losing money on a deal to buy Russia's uranium stockpile and sell it to utility companies worldwide. \USEC\ will evenly divide the cuts between the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, and the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah, Ky. About 2,100 people work in Piketon and 1,700 in Paducah.... Bethesda, Md.-based USEC was a federal agency set up to enrich uranium for commercial nuclear plants. It was privatized in 1998 "to better compete in a global market" [Ed: our quotes]..\..
   [A more informative statement than this cliche would likely be that it was privatized because some rich political campaign contributors wanted to get richer by going public and goosing share prices with a small layoff -]
   The company cut 250 workers from each plant last year....
   [which apparently didn't work, because -]
   USEC's stock price has fallen steadily since opening in 1998 at $14.25 per share..\..
   [So basically, the USEC wants the government to guarantee their stock price? Here's another clue -]
   USEC officials say while the company is profitable, it is losing money on the Russian contract.
   [So let's get this straight. We have a former government agency that got privatized under unpublicized circumstances and that is now doing 850 layoffs despite being in profit. Folks, here's the evidence before your eyes, - our near-sighted and short-sighted CEOs, and our federal representatives and bureaucrats whom they have purchased, are fueling the downsizing of their own consumer base and thereby inducing depression. Despite government links, they're in profit but they're still downsizing. And it gets "better" -]
   The [Russian contract] was set up by the U.S. Government to keep Soviet-era warhead uranium away from rogue nations and terrorists. USEC has bought the uranium equivalent to 3,000 warheads.
   [So the US Government set up a whole business here, then turned it over to some private "investors." You can guess the next step -]
   USEC asked the Federal Government in December to compensate the company for up to $200m lost on the Russian deal,...
   [Classic!]
   ...but the government declined..\..
   [A piece of good news at last! But now, of course, -]
   ...[USEC] expects to save $39m [one-time or annually??] with the latest round of layoffs, which are to begin in July [despite the fact that] both plants are heavily contaminated, with cleanup expected to take many years. \Federal\ Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said he would announce a plan [today] to use some of the displaced workers for cleanup efforts at the plants and other Energy Dept.-funded sites in the areas....
   [Maybe it would have been more effective for the government to simply lodge a counter-request for $200m for setting up the company and getting it the Russian contract in the first place, because the company, in true grownup style, has clearly had a tantrum and said, "OK, if you're gonna stop coddling us, we'll show you! - We'll CUT JOBS! So there!" Folks, we're going to have a real hard time escaping a giganto Great Depression II with self-destructive and baby-brained morons like this running our private and public sectors. And don't forget the "reassuring" fact that we're not talking about a coal company here - we're talking about a nuclear company.]
   ...[USEC] closed unchanged Thursday [2/03] at $5.87½ on the NYSE.
   [Gee, maybe we should start a webpage to collect failed privatizations and nationalizations. We could call it Further Fields Always Look Greener or just, Failed Flips.]

2. Storage Technology plans to cut up to 600 more jobs, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...StorageTek...the No. 1 maker of corporate computer tape storage systems..\..said yesterday that it would cut 500 to 600 more jobs [i.e., up to 7% of its total workforce of about 8,750] and that its chief executive, David E. Weiss, would step down....
   [Gee, a company where jobcuts are still regarded as a CEO failure instead of bragging point!]
   It hired Goldman, Sachs & Co. in October to explore a possible sale after it lost business to rivals [and ] has cut about 600 jobs of the 1500-1,750 [it] said [then (10/29/99)] it would eliminate..\.. Yesterday [it] said it would but its number of units to two from six and would try to remain independent....

3. Stage Stores Inc., NYT, C4.
   ...Houston, a specialty retail chain, said it would close about 60 of its clothing stores this year and cut an undisclosed number of jobs to reduce costs.
   [Note related item on 6/03/00, "Stage Stores files for bankruptcy protection," AP via NYT, B4: "Stage Stores' stock price has plunged 91% in the last year, prompting a shakeup of top executives and the closing of 31 stores." Guess that means "31 down, 29 to go."]

1. CNH Global to reduce its global work force by 7,000, AP via NYT, C4.
   ...The farm and construction equipment company created by last year's acquisition of the Case Corp. by New Holland V.N. plans to reduce its worldwide work force by about 20%...by 2002 [to] achieve...savings.... The Netherlands-based company will close 10 plants and 15 warehouses worldwide [out of] 46 plants in 16 countries....
   [Again the lethal takeover-downsizing connection, despite the supposedly enlightened involvement of the Dutch, who should know better.]

2. Bethlehem Steel is cutting 15% of its salaried workers, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   ...500 workers...to improve its position in the domestic steel industry, which the company said had been hurt by foreign imports [and] to improve its cost structure and increase productivity..\..
   [Productivity is no good without consumption, and consumption doesn't exist without a consumer base, and a consumer base is constantly diminished by spiralling layoffs.]
   It expected to complete the job cuts by Jan. 31, 2001. About one-third of the reduction has already been finished, with 60% of the total cuts set to be completed by June....

3. Ernst & Young cutting consulting jobs, Bloomberg via NYT, C2.
   ...The world's third-largest accounting and consulting firm is eliminating 400 consulting jobs as the firm shifts its focus to electronic commerce.
   [Anybody in the mosh pit wanna stand up and chant "Technology creates more jobs than it destroys!" and then tell us what incentives there are for introducing it?]
   The firm is dismissing 5% of its total consulting staff in North America....
   [Code words for U.S. and Canada.]
   Ernst & Young is the second firm to say that it is dismissing employees who are not involved in electronic commerce even as it plans to spend more money on hiring employees in other areas.
   [Oh? and how many are we hiring, pray tell. Usually we're firing by the 1000s and hiring by the 100s - case in point -]
   PricewaterhouseCoopers said in October that it was dismissing 1,000 of its support staff.
   [So now consultants have to provide their own support - be their own secretaries, etc. And will they automatically get a raise in accordance with this extra productivity output, as our simple and good-hearted mainstream economists gladly assume? We believe Scott Adams' Dilbert has answered that one several times over the past 10 years.]
   ...The cuts were made by capacity and skill set [at Ernst & Young]. Employees whose projects were finished and who could not be reassigned to new ones were being let go....
   [We suspect this is more a lack of new projects and management laziness than lack of versatility on the part of "employees whose projects were finished."]
   Mr. [Lawrence] Parnell [a spokesman] said the discussions with the affected employees were "wrapping up today."
   [Yeah, as in "Pass the shroud, I want to wrap up another employee discussion."]
   ...Cap Gemini SA, Europe's largest computer services company...is in talks to buy Ernst & Young's consulting practice. \Parnell\ added that the moves were not in expectation of the completion of [this purchase] agreement....
   [What was it psychologists used to say about people's tendency to go out of their way to deny the truth?]

4. Dynegy Inc.,, NYT, C4.
   ...Houston, a natural gas and electricity trader, said it would cut about 550, 225 more than previously forecast, as it completed its purchase of the Illinova Corp., Decatur, Ill., a utility owner.
   [Again the lethal takeover-jobcuts connection as we plunge onward toward that single all-merged corporation in the sky - with one employee and no markets.]

5. Beth Israel begins layoffs to counter 1999 losses, by Liz Kowalczyk, Boston Globe, D7.
   The hospital system headed by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center last week began laying off more than 100 administrators and other staff as part of a plan to recover from serious 1999 fiscal losses.
   ["OK, kids, do your own paperwork!"]
   The hospital also is hiring several well-known doctors to head key departments, such as anaesthesia and surgery.... Beth Israel Deaconess's interim president, Michael Rosenblatt, said he's bringing on five to 10 top doctors to head departments or work in strategic areas, such as liver transplantation..\..
   [Oh here we go. We fire 100 and hire 10. And the ones we hire are "well-known" so we're doin' a little CYA here ("cover your *ss"), and no doubt despite expressed intentions of cutting costs, we're gonna pay princely sums to these paragons.]
   The hospital's parent company, CareGroup Health Care System, lost $100m last year....
   [Well, as the beggar says, in Fiddler on the Roof - "Because your business is bad, why should I suffer?"]
   Layoffs began last week and will end by Feb. 15.
   [Ah, Feb. 15 - the day our prison population is expected to hit 2,000,000 Americans.]
   Expected to save $15m, they include staff cuts in administration, information services, finance, and some clinical areas. Staff reductions will number "in the low hundreds," including attrition and retirements, hospital officials said....
   [Well we would say that means "at least 200," not "more than 100" as the Globe said above.]
   The [liver transplant] team will hire several more doctors and reopen the program June 1....

1. Job cuts by big French auto parts maker send shares lower, by John Tagliabue, NYT, C4.
   [France isn't doing worktime reduction in a particularly smart, flexible or market-oriented way i its jump from 39 to 35 hours a week, and there are still a lot of dumb companies in France, as this article shows (and the French stock market confirmed), but France is still a big jump ahead of us or anybody else in the world with an enforced 35-hour maximum workweek, a level that should have come in all over the world 60 years ago.]
   Investors often reward companies that eliminate jobs and reorganize themselves to become more efficient. But shareholders in Valéo S.A. of France, one of Europe's largest automotive parts companies, sold heavily today [Valéo down 9.9%] on news that it would cut 6,000 jobs, or 12% of the total, in the next two years, and invest heavily in Latin America and Eastern Europe to shift its presence away from economically mature regions like North America and Western Europe.
   [Valéo must have a deathwish, because -]
   ...problems nagging at Valéo's overall performance persisted in Latin America, where it generated only 3% of revenue..\.. [Although Valéo's apparent] profit increased 117% in 1999 [most of that] was the result of a one-time increase from the sale of 50% of a German clutch maker [joint venture] LuK GmbH. [Real] operating profit, on the other hand, rose only 14%...despite the 28% revenue increase....
   [What the heck is the matter with a 14% profit?! If these deathwish companies keep downsizing their own and their customers' consumer base (in the form of their own employees), they will get their wish and push their economy into a death spiral. As to many other dumb top execs today, to Valéo, "further fields look greener." They're going to get a shock.]

2. Oklahoma company buying Dynegy natural gas assets, Dow Jones via NYT, C4.
   [We've decided that an "assets only purchase" must be either a covert takeover or a covert layoff.]
   ...The assets include Dynegy's eight gas processing plants, interests in two other plants and about 7,000 miles of gas gathering and intrastate pipeline systems.....

1. [Again, the lethal takeover-downsizing connection -]
   Norfolk Southern to lay off 550, AP via AOLNews via RadioTony, 29 Jan 2000 18:35:10 EST.
   ...blaming falling revenue, high diesel prices...coupled with problems associated with the company's takeover of Conrail last year [and] a decline in the export coal market to Asia..\..
   Company officials confirmed the layoffs Friday, just two days after Norfolk Southern announced an early retirement program for 1,200 nonunion employees [ed: see story below on 1/27]. The company has about 35,000 employees.
   The layoffs, set to take effect next Friday, affect track and machine workers who belong to the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way and are scattered across the Norfolk [Va.]- based railroad's 12 divisions in 22 states, mostly east of the Mississippi River. Spokeswoman Susan Bland...said more layoffs could follow.

2. HMO seen laying off 65; mental health to be hardest hit by Liz Kowalczyk, Boston Globe, D6.
   Harvard Pilgrim Health Care may lay off up to 65 administrators this week in cost-cutting measures that were planned last fall to help turn around the failing health plan.... The largest portion of layoffs will likely occur in the mental health department, where Harvard Pilgrim employs 30 psychiatrists, social workers and other mental health professionals to manage cases. About half the employees would then work for Value Options, a private company Harvard Pilgrim is seeking to hire to manage mental health benefits....
   [Sounds kind of if-fy but they're not counting them among the 65 layoffs. What are they counting?...]
   The remaining 15 mental health professionals will be shifted to other positions within Harvard Pilgrim or leave the company with severance pay, he said.... Besides mental health professionals, Harvard Pilgrim may also lay off up to 50 additional administrators as part of 2000 budget cuts....
   [Now is that 2000 jobcuts in the budget? Or just 2000 anykindof cuts in the budget? Or just 2000AD (thisyear) cuts in the budget? Fuzzy journalism alert.]
   The Brookline health maintenance organization employs 2,100 people.
   [So 65 layoffs is 3% of their whole staff.]

3. Alcohol agency probers laid off - States cites a shortfall in commission budget, by Joanna Weiss, Bos Globe, B1.
   All eight of the state's Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission investigators - best known for their crackdown on underage drinking at nightclubs and bars - will be laid off this month, state officials confirmed yesterday.... [The agency's] work is sometimes duplicated by local authorities. But critics say the layoffs could make it much harder for the state to enforce its liquor laws. The layoffs, announced to investigators last week, were prompted by a $100,000 shortfall in the Commission's 1999-2000 budget....
   [Colleague Kate asks, how come Salooch (Gov. Cellucci) wants taxcuts if there's really a budget shortfall here? But then, this is the guy they say was too dumb to spell H.M.O.]